The Air Observers School No. 5 (AOS) was a component of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan (CATP) during the Second World War. It was built in 1940 on this 60-acre site, located at the southwest corner of Ellice Avenue and Ferry Road, in the then-municipality of St. James (now a suburb of Winnipeg) by the Claydon Company Limited of St. Vital. The facility included double-sized hangars; storage buildings; repair depots; mess and quarters for officers, airmen, and non-commissioned officers; guard houses; workshops; telegraph buildings, and copious amounts of concrete to provide the necessary taxi-ways and runways at Stevenson Field.

Also part of the larger complex was a 15-acre aircraft wing factory situated along Berry, from Ellice Avenue to Sargent Avenue, and the 30-acre Repair Depot No. 8 on the north side of Ellice Avenue from Berry Street to Sackville Street. These facilities employed around 900 and 480 civilians, respectively.

On 5 December 1940, AOS staff moved in and took command of the site. To run the new school, the Winnipeg Air Observers School Limited (WAOSL) was formed by the commercial aviation firms of Wings Limited and Starratt Airways. Led by company President R. W. Starratt, other senior staff included Vice-President T. N. Clayton, General Manager M. E. Ashton, H. S. Scarth, Roy Brown, Secretary D. S. Ormond, Operations Manager William A. “Bill” Straith, and William Benedickson.

The AOS opened on 6 January 1941, using commercially-owned and maintained, civilian-flown Avro Ansons assembled at the nearby MacDonald Aircraft Plant. The aircraft were operated under the supervision and instruction of Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) personnel. At the time of opening, the RCAF instructors included Flight Lieutenant Henry Geoffrey Malcolmson, Flying Officer Robert Wilson, and Pilot Officers G. Winn and G. G. Milne. Other staff included some 130 civilians working as mechanics, ground crew, and other technicians, including around 20 pilots of which several were veteran Manitoba bush pilots.

CATP aircrews were educated in a variety of topics, including air navigation, aerial photography, reconnaissance, observation, mapping, and target description. By 24 October 1941, bombing practice was underway, with student crews dropping 11.5-pound smoke bombs from a height of 6,000 feet onto wooden pyramid targets in marshlands at Ridgely, north of Stonewall.

As the war progressed and scale of training increased, larger facilities were needed. In 1943, some 400 workers constructed a new home for the AOS on the southwest side of Stevenson Field. With its expanded capacity, consisting of some 33 structures, the student body grew three-fold. After the relocation in November 1943, the flying squadron from Wireless School No. 3 moved into the former AOS buildings, having previously been based out of Repair Depot No. 8.

The WAOSL closed in the summer of 1945 and the site is now home to No. 17 Wing of Canadian Forces Base Winnipeg.

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